The opposing armies faced each other across the desolate, deserted and dangerous wastes of No Man's Land. The front lines consisted of a warren of communication trenches, support trenches, advanced trenches and observation posts, in which men faced appalling conditions surrounded by dirt, disease and death. The war veteran and writer Robert Graves said of the Western Front that it was "known among its embittered inhabitants as the sausage Machine, because it was fed with live men, churned out corpses, and remained firmly screwed in place."

For the  Canadians the front line advanced only one mile in two years, and casualty figures for the British forces as a whole 9including Canadian) were incredibly high. Over the course of the war on the Western Front, 118,941 officers and 2,571,113 men became causalities: a quarter of these were killed. On July 1, 1916 alone, the British lost nearly 58,000 men. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment attacked at Beaumont-Hamel on that day and suffered 91 percent casualties: of the 801 who went into the attack 684 were killed or wounded in 40 minutes.

In the winter the ground was frozen under a layer of snow and ice: men had extreme cold to add to their fear and their hunger, the noise of artillery bombardments and the stench in which they lived constantly. When spring came so did the rain, and the trenches and No Man's Land turned into a quagmire. In this vast sea of mud, men could - and did - drown, especially if they were wounded. Movement became almost impossible, and troops lived continually in water, which even in the better trenches could average a depth of two feet. Many thousands of men as a result suffered from trench foot, which if not  treated could lead to amputation. Always there were the millions of rats, the lice, the flies and disease. Robert Graves said after the war: "The familiar trench smell still haunts my nostrils: compounded of stagnant mud, latrine buckets, chloride of lime, unburied or half buried corpses, rotting sandbags, stale human sweat, fumes of cordite.... Rats became a menace almost as unnerving as the enemy... They fed on unburied corpses that surrounded us and sometimes filled the trenches." George Coppard, who served as a machine gunner, described how heavy shelling would "churn up the dead in bits and pieces. Every square yard of ground seemed to be layered with corpses at varying depths, producing a sickening stench." This stench could be smelled several miles away. It is not surprising that so many of the dead have no known grave - more than 70,000 from the British Empire alone.  

Lice caused continual itching and discomfort. Breeding in the warmth of underclothing, they plagued the men and no delousing methods proved effective. They also bred disease, as did the millions of flies that swarmed around the living and the dead alike. Official statistics show how more than three and a half million men succumbed to illness because of the terrible conditions in the trenches.

n this world of stealth and strange sounds, millions of men tried to survive trench life. They faced the continual danger of artillery bombardment, snipers, trench raids and going "over the top" to attack the enemy. Often they would not see the enemy for weeks at a time, although he was close by, trying to survive just as they were. They felt isolated form the real world, Canadian and German alike, and in their unreal world they came to have little in common with civilians back home, for whom they often developed feelings of contempt.
	Officially, troops were supposed to receive the following daily ration: 1 1/4 lb. fresh or frozen meat, or 1 lb. preserved or salt meat; 1 1/4 lb. bread, or 1 lb. biscuit or flour; 4 oz. bacon; 3 oz. cheese; 5/8 oz. tea; 4 oz. jam; 3 oz. sugar; 1/2 oz. salt; 1/36 oz. pepper; 1/20 oz. mustard; 8 oz. fresh or 2 oz. dried vegetables; 1/10 gill line juice if fresh vegetables not issued; 1/2 gill rum (at the discretion of the Commanding General); not exceeding 2 oz. tobacco per week. In reality, men frequently received less than what was officially prescribed. In the front lines food was poor, almost always cold even in the winter. Facilities for heating were limited. Usually the fare consisted of bread, bully beef and hard biscuits. During battle, food often could not be brought up to the forward trenches. Water was brought forward in empty gasoline cans and tasted of gasoline and chloride of lime, which was always added. Sometimes only water from mud-filled shell holes was available.

Troops did not spend all of their time in front line trenches. In theory, a strict schedule of rotating them through forward and support trenches, as well as rest areas behind the lines, was supposed to be adhered to. According to this schedule, men were given two eight-day tour in a support area, where they might be able to enjoy the local estaminets (cafes) or perhaps be entertained by such concert parties as the Dumbells. For some this was the case, but often it was not possible to maintain the rotation and men could sometimes spend three to four weeks in the line. Even in rest areas they were likely to be shelled. Moving into the line at night, men carried heavy loads of equipment (60-80 pounds in weight) and in wet conditions their greatcoat could add another 50 pounds. Struggling along narrow trenches in pitch darkness was a nightmare for most men, and to stumble into the mud could prove fatal.

Once in the forward trenches, life settled into a routine which allowed very little rest: indeed, lack of sleep became one of the biggest problems with which troops had to contend. The bustle of the daily routine meant that even for those resting there was no  opportunity for quiet. Just